On June 7, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for more efforts to consolidate cultural confidence and boost “cultural prosperity.” This was at the opening of the first Forum on Building Up China's Cultural Strength, held in Shenzhen. At the forum, Wang Xudong, director of the Palace Museum, stressed the importance of preserving cultural heritage in building up cultural strength. He quoted Xi saying, "Without the 5,000-year Chinese civilization, Chinese characteristics could not be formed.” Wang added that cultural heritage cannot be replaced, and that all have a responsibility to protect it.

There was mention of learning from other civilizations. Many hoped that after America won the Cold War, Beijing would want to learn from our example. But all China’s leaders wanted was our technology and management skills. Looking at our culture and how it plays out in democracy and business behavior is not attractive in Xi. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, China draws more on ancient imperial thought than a discredited Marxism. From this vantage, Xi is convinced that the West in general and the U.S. in particular are in decline, rotting from within, and thus our culture is to be kept at bay rather than embraced.

Economic reformer Deng Xiaoping claimed “To get rich is glorious” but Xi’s focus is on national, not individual wealth. China boasts more billionaires than America. Xi has acted to keep these moguls tied to the party and state policy while purging corruption among officials. Western democracy is denounced as a system dominated by interest groups competing for their own gains without regard to larger national needs. In Xi’s doctrine, a one-party system with no other constituency than the entire people united for the common good is true democracy.

The criticism has broadened to culture due to the bizarre images America is flashing to the outside world. Many have been alarmed by how fast “woke” ideas emerged from the dark fringe to dominate media, education, and even corporate boardrooms. Yet, the ancient Chinese philosopher Shang Yang knew how vulnerable society could be to bad ideas. Writing nearly 2,400 years ago, Lord Shang noted “When a ruler loves their sophistry, and does not seek practical value, then the professional talkers have it all their way, expound their cooked sophistries in the streets…. captivating kings, dukes and great men.”

America is overrun with professional talkers, the most disruptive tracing their ideology back to the New Left who sought during the Vietnam War to bring an end to the “victory culture” that had been the narrative of American history from its colonial founding through World War II. The undeniable success of the United States in becoming the lead nation in the lead civilization of the modern era must be discredited and overturned because it is not based on leftist ideas. Of course, nothing substantial has ever been built on leftist ideas, so the very concept of success or “victory” must be denounced as immoral. Failure is to be embraced as more comfortable and less problematic. Basic material needs will be met without effort by socialism, which will also keep us in harmony with a soothing nature. Without pressure to achieve, our vulgar sides can atrophy as we can redefine ourselves in softer forms.

Consider Levi Gahman, dual-based at universities in London and the West Indies but focused on criticizing American culture which he sees based on White Settler Christianity, “traditional family values” and “capitalist social relations.” Toxic Masculinity is the core problem and thus we must reject as “natural” or “normal” traditional ideas of gender identities to overturn “heteropatriarchy and white supremacy.” When he describes the role of a man in “providing for his family, educating his children, and making sure to pass on knowledge, expertise and know-how to future generations” it is not to praise such responsibility but to condemn it. Mothers, of course, play the same positive role as fathers, and are condemned as well by “woke” schools that want to expel parents (of all colors) from their premises. Leftists prey on children because they lack real world experience, a deficiency parents must not be allowed to remedy as it would reduce their susceptibility to airy classroom notions tied to failure and mental trauma. The last words in Gahman’s 2020 book Land, God, and Guns: Settler Colonialism and Masculinity in the American Heartland are “All colonizers must die, and so too, masculinity.”

President Xi agrees with the first part of Grahan’s sentiments, but not the second. His goal is to build China into the world’s greatest power by 2049, the centennial of the Communist victory in the civil war. He agrees with Lord Shang’s that “an intelligent prince… restrains volatile scholars and those of frivolous pursuits.” Xi is advancing a narrative of national triumph, even basing Beijing’s claim to the South China Sea on the dominant position Imperial China held in the past. His cultural policies are integrated into his economic and military policies; indeed, they are seen as a foundation for them. He has sought to drive foreign ideas from the media as well as the schools. Xi has banned “effeminate men” from television programs and social media. Si Zefu, a high regime official, believes the “feminization” of Chinese boys “threatens China’s survival and development.” There has also been a campaign against pop culture and celebrity fan clubs because these make boys feel “weak, inferior and timid.”

Schools teach nationalism, glorify China’s long history and only lament when it was weak, as during the “century of humiliation” when Western powers carved out spheres of influence within its lands. The national program builds on over a century of “self-strengthening” efforts that predate the rise of the Communist Party but not the rise of Chinese ambitions to regain its former power in Asia, and from there the world.

Chandran Nair left his native India for Hong Kong to promote a Pan-Asia project with China at its core. He often addresses an American audience to warn that “the West must prepare for a long overdue reckoning.” He easily adopts current left-wing rhetoric. The title of his new book is Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World.

Our adversaries have made this mistake before. In the 1930s, the Japanese thought Americans were too decadent and isolationist to oppose their expansion. Pearl Harbor would knock us down and we'd stay down. In the 1970s, the disgraceful withdrawal from Vietnam, riots, and stagflation made the Soviets feel things were going their way in the Cold War. But that's not how things turned out. On 9/11 my office was only two blocks from the White House. On that chaotic day what I remember best occurred on my way home. A large pickup truck with an American flag flying from its cab roared by me. The driver was blaring his horn. That was toxic masculinity coming to the rescue, the stuff of true pride. The next 17 months will determine whether it still flows through our veins. Will we have a leader who loves sophistries or one who embraces the realities of what made America great? The survival of a successful United States as the secure home for all who live here, of both genders and all races, is on the line.

William R. Hawkins is a former economics professor who served on the professional staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has written widely on international economics and national security issues for both professional and popular publications. 

Image: reinhold möller